- Region: Andalucia
- Province: Cadiz/Malaga
- Declared a Natural Park: 1989
- Park surface area: 167.767 hectares
- Villages and Towns in the area: Alcalá de Los Gazules, Algar, Algeciras, Arcos de La Frontera, Los Barrios, Benalup-casas Viejas, Benaocaz, El Bosque, Castellar de La Frontera, Cortes de La Frontera, Jerez de La Frontera, Jimena de La Frontera, Medina-sidonia, Prado del Rey, San Jose del Valle, San Roque, Tarifa, Ubrique
Points of interest
Los Alcornocales is a forest of Cork oak trees, the largest in Iberia and therefore important to the worlds cork supply. The park, which also embraces mountains, creates a green corridor from the Sierra de Grazalema natural park through to the coastal zone at Tarifa.
The harvesting of cork is done on a 9 to 12 year cycle. The bark is stripped from the tree by hand, packed onto mules and taken to forest tracks where it can be loaded onto a vehicle. The cork collection is only carried out for 3 months in the heat of summer when it separates easily from the tree.
Therefore, the fauna and flora are left undisturbed between these harvest times, giving an important refuge to many plants and animals.
Recent research has discovered a wealth of animal and plant forms that exist here because of the humidity. The heavy tree canopy and many deep water channels (canutos) combine to create a subtropical micro climate in a normally very dry part of Spain.
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